Three Remain Cover Design

Three Remain is a novel which will be published in 2019 and this post concerns the Three Remain cover design. I can best categorize the novel as a mystery thriller with traces of speculative fiction overtones. Since the first worthwhile manuscript draft, I envisioned the Three Remain cover design to represent the following scene from the second chapter:

A sign approached, indicating two miles to Jackson Road, his exit to the hospital. As they crested a rise in the road he eased his foot off the pedal. They confronted a massive, white cloud bank rising from ground level to the sky about a mile ahead, just beyond the upcoming exit to the town of Falls Creek. The sun shined in the clear blue sky above, but ahead of them, a wall of dense, white cloud climbed from the expressway to hundreds of feet into the air.

That scene eventually fostered the following initial concept for the front cover:

Fortunately, a creative artist, Vanessa Verstraete, possessing the talent to develop sketches of multiple concepts in a short period of time agreed to take on the Three Remain cover design. Since a book’s cover is nearly, or equally as important as the title, we investigated alternatives to “car approaching fogbank,” wanting to be sure we pusured the correct choice. As was the case in the book’s title, the cover design is changing to another scene that better represents the feel, characters, and emotion of the novel.

I previously issued a post on the title change from “Sunshine at the Oasis” to “Three Remain.” That process, although agonizing and heart wrenching for me, resulted in the right title for the book. Similarly difficult, the change of cover concept is the right one for Three Remain. The design concept is based on the following passage from chapter three:

Closing the trunk, Sunshine said to Glen, “When I get my memory back I hope I don’t discover I have children. They are a pain in the ass.”

Sunshine chose a location on the side of a small hill overlooking the lake. Spreading the blanket on the well-manicured grass, she knelt looking across the water. The fog bank traversed the lake, hiding the far shore. She shivered.

This is the initial concept for the Three Remain cover design (also the feature image for this post). It includes wrap around art from front to back covers: